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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23822707">No Sensation Like You</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jemppu/pseuds/Jemppu'>Jemppu</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Months [21]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek: Discovery</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Art, Culmets - Freeform, Fanart, M/M, Tumblr, honey mushroom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 16:21:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,743</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23822707</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jemppu/pseuds/Jemppu</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Part of <b>"Honey Mushroom"</b> series of illustrated Culmets moments <a href="https://tinyurl.com/honeyshroom"><b>listed here on tumblr</b></a>, and of <b>"Months"</b> moments, taking place before the couple's ultimate Discovery mission.</p><p>Paul enjoying a quiet moment on Earth with Hugh.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>With illustration: <b>"Man of the Fleet"</b></i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hugh Culber/Paul Stamets</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Months [21]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1082124</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>No Sensation Like You</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The series gets released quite out of order, as inspiration dictates, so I urge you to check out the <a href="https://tinyurl.com/honeyshroom">series list on tumblr</a> for a better picture of the whole.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h2>
  
</h2><h2>Months: No Sensation Like You </h2><p>
  
</p><p>Goodness, how he will miss this - rain. There’s no rain in space. Or this crisp early morning freshness, for that matter. The air is calm, not a whiff of wind in it. Which is perfect, but if there was any, he’d welcome it too.<br/>
<br/>
The rain comes down straight, yet gentle. He can tell it is warm from the delicate evaporation rising from the cool morning grass, but puts his hand out of the door to touch it anyway. One more satisfactory sensation tickled.</p><p>Despite the hustle that was their swift departure from Deneva, it’s good to be back on Earth. Even if it will be only for a month before they will head out for good, in the cold, dark and empty vastness of space. Who knows for how long.</p><p><br/>
Paul is leaning on the doorway of their rented room, facing the garden yard outside the small guest house. He is taking in the numerous overwhelming smells from the flowers, the green leaves, the grass, the soggy dirt on the ground and the wet wood paneling on the small patio.<br/>
<br/>
He willingly surrenders himself to these sensations, letting the tranquil morning calm wash over him completely.<br/>
<br/>
He can even appreciative the subtle difference between the coolness of the outside temperature on his chest and the relative warmth of the room radiating on his back.<br/>
<br/>
He glances back into the room behind him and to his sleeping man, enticingly spread on the bed, and looking ever so sensual, laying there with the white sheets barely covering him. As is his affable way.<br/>
<br/>
Paul turns his gaze back outside, and is suddenly struck by a peculiar feeling, as if an acknowledgement of something primal: like he is an animal, guarding a nest, watching over it’s mate. Is this perhaps why he always prefers the door side of the bed too? - he wonders, now gaining reason to something he only realized recently, but had apparently been doing for long. As long as there had been a bed to share perhaps?<br/>
<br/>
He lets out a little amused huff for his thoughts. Is he reading too much into things? Or indeed, assuming a bit too much “ownership” over the man perhaps?<br/>
<br/>
If anyone here ‘owns’ anything it’s Hugh: the discoverer and the sole proprietor of Paul’s after all hopelessly human heart.<br/>
<br/>
Paul smiles to himself, his gaze now fixed on the branches of the garden trees, and their leaves dancing under the touch of the rain drops, flickering in the otherwise still surroundings like a mirage or a broken holographic projection, making him almost doubt his eyesight.<br/>
<br/>
Soon the doctor will wake up, and Paul finds himself eager to tell his Darling how much he loves him. He doesn’t tell it nearly enough, he feels.<br/>
<br/>
But for now he’s enjoying listening to the first early morning birds waking up to the gradually increasing light outside, as the rain slowly turns into a light drizzle and the sound of it shifts from a steady shower to tiny mellow thuds among the grass and playful little stray beats of individual drops on the hard wood surfaces around the garden.<br/>
<br/>
His Dear is missing out on all of this soothing bliss.<br/>
<br/>
But it shouldn’t matter. With all these changes going around right now, and his newly found hope for the two of them, Paul is finding himself as if re-ignited in love: what he just yesterday still thought lost, is so no longer, and right now it feels they’ll have countless mornings ahead to enjoy together.<br/>
<br/>
More vividly than ever before, Paul is also cognizant of the fact, that any time they visit anywhere, he finds himself thinking it could be the kind of place he will settle in for good. This is true here as well: he would not mind waking up to this each morning.<br/>
<br/>
He has come to realize this must mean, that it doesn’t really matter where he ends up, as long as it’s with this darling man, now turning side on the bed behind Paul.<br/>
<br/>
The man is after all the single reason why Paul ever started to have these thoughts in the first place - it’s another thing he had lately became aware of: his dreams up to this point had all been but for his work’s success, and the betterment of humanity’s collective knowledge of the world around them via astromycology. Grant goals no doubt, but distant, impersonal perhaps. In the end, something he’d have to give up on to others if the dream truly were to fulfill itself.<br/>
<br/>
Hugh had brought with him the realization, that Paul could easily miss out on his own life, if he kept living for his work alone, dismissing any and all individual urges and the stimuli he had always deemed ‘unnecessary’ in the past.<br/>
<br/>
Paul closes his eyes and is immediately overwhelmed by how vividly he can feel on himself the man’s caress from last night. So soft and tender. Yet, so pleasingly firm. Both soothing as much as exhilarating.<br/>
<br/>
“Appreciating?” a gentle voice sounds out unexpectedly amidst Paul’s dreaming.<br/>
<br/>
Unexpected, but most anticipated, Paul smiles to himself.<br/>
<br/>
He hears the bed sheets shuffle invitingly behind him as Hugh shifts position. Paul then opens his eyes to turn and look at the man over his shoulder. He is met with the most loving of gazes from Hugh’s still sleep hazed eyes.<br/>
<br/>
Such an alluring sight.<br/>
<br/>
“Guarding the nest”, Paul smiles - cryptically -, prompting Hugh’s brows to raise to one of his endearingly dubious looks, further charmed by the man’s drowsiness.<br/>
<br/>
“Aren’t you getting cold standing there half naked?” Hugh proposes with fetching huskiness in his voice.<br/>
<br/>
Rich coming from a man who makes a habit of lounging around with not a thread on him on regular, Paul laughs in his head. Of course he is cold - that’s in part the point, he muses, fully appreciating this blessedly soft and humid air on his bare skin.<br/>
<br/>
He stands there a moment longer taking in the scene - looking over the awakening garden once more, then turning to gaze at the man in the sheets, now stretching the sleep off his well defined muscles, as enticingly comfortable in his skin as the man ever is.<br/>
<br/>
Paul lifts his brows and blinks his eyes playfully in reply to Hugh’s bemusedly accusatory glance, and takes a step towards the bed.<br/>
<br/>
The mattress creaks gently under Paul’s weight as he goes to settle himself next to Hugh. It adds a certain rustic charm to the Earthly idyll of this place, Paul thinks, and catches Hugh smiling to himself fondly, no doubt remembering it from the last night too.<br/>
<br/>
He can feel Hugh’s skin radiate heat far before their bodies touch. The man twinges a bit on contact. Skin against skin Hugh feels almost burning hot.<br/>
<br/>
“Honey, you’re an icicle”, Hugh exclaims, the drowsiness in his voice suddenly gone, but doesn’t pull off, instead puts his arm around Paul and pulls him in even closer to provide warmth.<br/>
<br/>
“It’s a bit too early to start and try to excuse yourself from the mission”, Hugh teases, rubbing down the chill erect hair on Paul’s arms, “and you will need something far worse than a common cold to get a pass”.<br/>
<br/>
Paul huffs mildly amused.<br/>
<br/>
Hugh’s fingers move up to stroke the side of Paul’s face gently. “So, how is he this fine morning?” the doctor asks, feeling out the slight stubble, invisible to the eye, “my man of the Fleet?”<br/>
<br/>
Up unusually early, unable to sleep.<br/>
<br/>
Yesterday had been quite a whirlwind of emotions for the both of them. With all these new things thrust upon them leaving the men quite overwhelmed and drained, unable or unwilling to express themselves to the degree the unexpected situation would probably necessitate. Verbally anyway. Lots of things had been left unsaid, no doubt.<br/>
<br/>
“Takes getting used to”, Paul replies, recalling the enormity of the ship, the protocols with which things seem to run aboard, all the introductions to the crew, and the sheer number of dispositions the personnel seem to operate on, from strictly officious to earnestly excited. All however with the underlying expectation of loyalty to this one organization Paul himself couldn’t give a toss about.<br/>
<br/>
All these people that will now be involved with ‘their research’. In decision making. All the countless meetings and bothersome bureaucracies that must be in his future now, for when ever he wishes for a permission to make a decision regarding the project.<br/>
<br/>
All the ways in which he no longer holds command over his own fucking work. Too maddening a thought for this perfect a moment however.<br/>
<br/>
Careful not to let an unwelcome frown creep on his face, Paul looks Hugh in the eyes - the sure way to light a smile on his face again. “But I’m relieved though”, he sighs content.<br/>
<br/>
Relieved, that the work can still resume. Or begin anew.<br/>
<br/>
The project will have a whole new chapter ahead of it now. Once all these pesky preparations are done. The crucial step from research to application.<br/>
<br/>
As it will be a noteworthy step forward in their relationship as well.<br/>
<br/>
Relieved, that he is not here alone after all.<br/>
<br/>
It’s a grand gesture, which is not lost on Paul: aware of the steady position Hugh had spent a career aspiring to, and which the doctor will have to leave behind to be here with Paul on this uncertain endeavor.<br/>
<br/>
Paul’s hand finds itself sailing across the pleasing firmness of the man’s abdomen. “Relieved, and so damn thankful that you are here”.<br/>
<br/>
As Paul damn well better be.<br/>
<br/>
Hugh smiles puckishly, his posture perking up under Paul’s touch, the mattress creaking along the movement, “remind me again why that is”.<br/>
<br/>
“Gladly”.<br/>
<br/>
Hell. Paul would readily abandon all of these blessed Earthly sensations for this one touch alone. He would willingly live the rest of his life on a fucking starship, if that’s what being with his Officer ever required.<br/>
<br/>
There would be no rain, no wind, no grass, or freshness of the air. No sea to soothe, no sand so smooth under foot, no birds to sing or cry out their melancholy calls.<br/>
<br/>
Just steadily controlled climate, re-filtered air, and no difference between night or day.<br/>
<br/>
It wouldn’t matter. Not as long as he’ll get to keep sharing the bed with this tender, loving man, and show him all the ways in which he appreciates him.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thoughts on the work posted along with the illustration on <a href="https://jmalkki.tumblr.com/post/181078809764/man-of-the-fleet-another-one-of-paul-standing"><b>tumblr</b></a>.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Likes, shares, comments and what have you, all appreciated on:</i><br/><i><a href="http://jmalkki.tumblr.com/"><b>tumblr</b></a>  |  <a href="https://twitter.com/Jemppu"><b>twitter</b></a>  |  <a href="https://www.instagram.com/jeminamalkki/"><b>instagram</b></a>  |  <a href="https://www.deviantart.com/jemppu"><b>DeviantArt</b></a></i></p></blockquote></div></div>
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